Just as in the days when I was Hooked on Classics, it looks like humanity is going to be ‘hooked on fossil fuels’ for awhile longer. According to British Petroleum’s chief scientists, Physicist Steven Koonin, we’ll be stuck with the nasty for decades to come.
Speaking to a crowd gathered at the Frances C. Arrillaga Alumni Center to hear the annual Drell Lecture, Koonin decided to follow in the steps of the great environmentalist Al Gore with a slideshow to make his point. According to a report from Stanford University the ‘lines on his chart representing worldwide energy demands in coming decades went on a steady upward trajectory.’
Sadly, these are the same years that we as a population need to cut back on carbon dioxide emissions, those created by fossil fuels.
Koonin pointed to the industrialization of India and China in the years to come as a driving force in world energy demands increasing. China is continually opening coal plants expelling carbon in to the atmosphere at the rate of one a week and India will slowly but inevitably turn to coal.
BP’s chief scientist is pushing the research at his company in to biomass fuels as a potential replacement to the commonplace fuels we have today, ‘but that all the means of alternative energy such as wind and solar would likely be unable to halt the increasing use of fossil fuels.’
Photo Courtesy of cjohnson7 via Flickr
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Joshua S Hill
I'm a Christian, a nerd, a geek, a liberal left-winger, and believe that we're pretty quickly directing planet-Earth into hell in a handbasket! I’m a 27-year-old author and writer from Melbourne, Australia. My first book is in the "looking for an agent" phase right now while I write my second. I also review fantasy books over at Fantasy Book Review (.co.uk). I love words with a passion, both creating them and reading them.
One Response to Hooked on Fossil Fuels
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The increase in the use of fossil fuel is surely slow down with massive increased costs: peak oil is happening now with peak coal to follow about 2025 according to Rutledge of CalTech.
So look to other energy sources, including bioenergy:
http://biopact.com/
http://www.icis.com/blogs/biofuels